Proto Ge-Ngqi-Civ scratchpad

[Atrulfal]

My first conlang.

/p mb t nd k ŋg/ <p mb t nd k ng>
/pˀ mbˀ tˀ ndˀ kˀ ŋgˀ/ <p' mb' t' nd' k' ng'>
/pʰ mbʰ tʰ ndʰ kʰ ŋgʰ/ <ph mbh th ndh kh ngh>
/pf mbv ts ndz kx ŋgɣ/ <pf mbv ts ndz kx ngq>
/pfˀ mbvˀ tsˀ ndzˀ kxˀ ŋgɣˀ/ <pf' mbv' ts' ndz' kx' ngq'>
/pfʰ mbvʰ tsʰ ndzʰ kxʰ ŋgɣʰ/ <pfh mbvh tsh ndzh kxh ngqh>
/ɸ˕ mβ˕ θ̞ nð̞ ɰ̊ ŋɰ/ <v mv c nc q nq>
/ɸ˕ˀ mβ˕ˀ θ̞ˀ nð̞ˀ ɰ̊ˀ ŋɰˀ/ <v' mv' c' nc' q' nq'>
/ɸ˕ʰ mβ˕ʰ θ̞ʰ nð̞ʰ ɰ̊ʰ ŋɰʰ/ <vh mvh ch nch qh nqh>
/ʙ̥ mʙ r̥ nr ʀ̥ ŋʀ/ <vr mvr r nr qr nqr>
/ʙ̥ˀ mʙˀ r̥ˀ nrˀ ʀ̥ˀ ŋʀˀ/ <vr' mvr' r' nr' qr' nqr'>
/ʙ̥ʰ mʙʰ r̥ʰ nrʰ ʀ̥ʰ ŋʀʰ/ <vrh mvrh rh nrh qrh nqrh>

/ĭ˧ i˧ iː˧ ɨ̆˧ ɨ˧ ɨː˧ ŭ˧ u˧ uː˧ æ̆˧ æ˧ æː˧ ă˧ a˧ aː˧ ɒ̆˧ ɒ˧ ɒː˧/ <i' i ih y' y yh u' u uh e' e eh a a' ah o' o oh>
/ĭ˧˥ i˧˥ iː˧˥ ɨ̆˧˥ ɨ˧˥ ɨː˧˥ ŭ˧˥ u˧˥ uː˧˥ æ̆˧˥ æ˧˥ æː˧˥ ă˧˥ a˧˥ aː˧˥ ɒ̆˧˥ ɒ˧˥ ɒː˧˥/ <iv' iv ivh yv' yv yvh uv' uv uvh ev' ev evh av' av avh ov' ov ovh>
/ĭ˧˩ i˧˩ iː˧˩ ɨ̆˧˩ ɨ˧˩ ɨː˧˩ ŭ˧˩ u˧˩ uː˧˩ æ̆˧˩ æ˧˩ æː˧˩ ă˧˩ a˧˩ aː˧˩ ɒ̆˧˩ ɒ˧˩ ɒː˧˩/ <ij' ij ijh yj' yj yjh uj' uj ujh ej' ej ejh aj' aj ajh oj' oj ojh>
/ĭ˥ i˥ iː˥ ɨ̆˥ ɨ˥ ɨː˥ ŭ˥ u˥ uː˥ æ̆˥ æ˥ æː˥ ă˥ a˥ aː˥ ɒ̆˥ ɒ˥ ɒː˥/ <ib' ib ibh yb' yb ybh ub' ub ubh eb' eb ebh ab' ab abh ob' ob obh>
/ĭ˩ i˩ iː˩ ɨ̆˩ ɨ˩ ɨː˩ ŭ˩ u˩ uː˩ æ̆˩ æ˩ æː˩ ă˩ a˩ aː˩ ɒ̆˩ ɒ˩ ɒː˩/ <is' is ish ys' ys ysh us' us ush es' es esh as' as ash os' os osh>

syllable structure (C)V but most root should monosyllabic

Some allophony and similar processes:
Might steal allophony rules from kaingang
A low tone will change to a mid tone when it precedes either a high or a mid tone.
A mid tone will change to a high tone when it is after a low or mid tone.
A rising tone will change to a high tone when it is after a rising tone.
A rising tone will change to a low tone when it is after a mid tone.
A falling tone will change to a low tone when it is after a falling tone.
A falling tone will change to a high tone when it is after a mid tone.

Grammar
-Isolating morphology with agglutinative derivation.
-verbs are undeclinable, all tenses are formed with auxiliaries
-head final
-SVO
-pro-drop
-no gender, no number, no case

some roots

More: show

Code: Select all

Ngq'obh		woman
Vryv			man
Che			family

that's it for now.

[Atrulfal]

Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

Due proto Ge-Ngqi-Civ being pro-drop and isolating, it may lead to some ambiguities that need to be resolved by context.

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Code: Select all

1sg formal
abh

1sg informal
tse

2sg formal
re

2sg informal
ncavh

3sg
vr'ish

1pl exclusive
abh riv

1pl inclusive
tse riv

2pl formal
re riv

2pl informal
ncavh riv

3pl
vr'ish riv

Possessive Pronoun

Possessive pronouns precede the noun and are formed with pronoun plus nr'ish(alienable possession) or nrab(inalienable possession).

Abh nrab vryv
"My man"

The nrab can be omitted if the pronoun is postfixed right after the noun.

Vryv abh
"My man"

Demonstrative Pronouns

Proto Ge-Ngqi-Civ makes a three-way distinction unlike English.

More: show

Code: Select all

sg proximal
av

sg medial
a

sg distal
ravh

pl proximal
av riv

pl medial
a riv

pl distal
ravh riv

[gufferdk]

Looks nice, but there are a couple of things that I noticed:

1. Your consonant inventory is VERY regular, which leads to some weird things. A thrill invetoy of /ʙ̥ mʙ r̥ nr ʀ̥ ŋʀ/ /ʙ̥ˀ mʙˀ r̥ˀ nrˀ ʀ̥ˀ ŋʀˀ/ /ʙ̥ʰ mʙʰ r̥ʰ nrʰ ʀ̥ʰ ŋʀʰ/ is very unrealistic. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with having a gap here and there, and an outlier somewhere else. That would help make it more naturalistic than the current situation of all the possible combinations of POA, MOA, and little diacritics being possible being phonemic.

1½. Exactly what is the ˀ supposed to represent? I cant find it in IPA. (If it is pharygealisation you need the mirror image insted.)

2. Vovel qualities of /i ɨ u æ a ɒ/. Vowel tends to like to fill out the space in the vowel grid. Even if /a/ is central this means that there is a huge concentration of vowels with high openness and i would expect /æ/ and /ɒ/ to drift towards more closure immediately, until you were left with something along the lines of /i ɨ ɛ a ɔ u/, which would be signifcantly more realistic and easier to use.

3. Your romanisation of the vowels seems pretty confusing to me. Perhaps people do things like that, but wouldn't it be easier, and more clear to just use something along the lines of <a ǎ â á à> instead of <a av aj ab as>.

4. I don't know how well a three-way length contrast would work together with having contour tones, as those as far as I know tend to make the vowel longer. I am also not sure how you would manage to get a contour tone to play with an ultra-short vowel. If I were you, I would cut it down to a two-way contrast. That way it would still be possible to have contour tones, without having to hold the long vowels with contour tones so long, that you would get bored before the end of it, just to maintain any sort of useful contrast with the nomal and short vowels.

5. You said you would have no number, but the next thing I see is a number contrast in personal pronouns

Edit: Also, there is a G in the name of your language but not i your phoneme inventory. It is, in other words, impossible to say the name of the language, in the language.

Edit: There is also the fact that your phoneme inventory just is VERY large. You have 72 phonemes, the craziest of crazy natlangs without clicks (Ubyx, which went extinct in 1992) had 84 phonemes, of which 80 were native. The catch is however that Ubyx had ejectives, labialisation, palatalisation, phraygealisation and 9 POAs, and all those extra things compared to you still only got them 12 more phonemes. If you include ones with clicks you get natlangs with up to 122 consonant phonemes (!Xóõ). All of these are outliers though and the average is somewhere around 21. WALS classifies anything with >33 consonant phonemes as a large inventory. The fact that you achieved an extremely large inventory with just 4 MOAs and 3 POAs should be an indication that something is F'd up.

[WeepingElf]

[Vardelm]

Nice sink, WeepingElf!

EDIT: That person must lead a sad, little life if that's all the coffee they keep on hand!

Gufferdk had some good input, to which I would add that it seems like you have simply tossed in a bunch of random features that probably seem cool to you. There is pharyngealization (?), aspiration, prenasalization, dental fricatives, multiple rhotics, lots of fricatives & affrcates, etc. That makes the phonology feel VERY kitchen-sinky & unnaturalistic (hence WeepingElf's post with the sink image). Try reducing the number of features in the phonology.

Same thing probably goes with the pronouns as well. You have formality & clusivity distinctions. That's not necessarily bad, but along with the phonology, it just adds to the kitchen-sinky-ness. I think if you simplify the phonology and don't go overboard on inflections for nouns &/or verbs, the pronouns could be fine.

[vokzhen]

ˀ is glottalization, it's usually only used for sonorants (e.g. Kalispel's ejective /p' t' ts' tl' tʃ' kʷ' q' qʷ'/ and parallel /ˀm ˀn ˀl ˀj ˀw ˀʕ ˀʕʷ/). I use it for close transcription of my final fortis stops, since they vary from preglottalized to unreleased to ejective based on context. Here, though, it needs to be clarified what is meant - is /pˀ/ ejective, has a creaky-voiced offglide, or just followed by a glottal stop that's been analyzed as part of the same segment rather than an independent phoneme? /bˀ/ implosive, creaky-voiced, or postglottalized?

-head final
-SVO

Just so you know these are generally contradictory, SVO languages overwhelmingly prefer head-initial traits:
10:1 for prepositions over postpositions
75:1 for noun-relative clause over relative clause-noun
18:1 for initial subordinator versus anything else (SOV has very roughly 1:1:1.5:1 for suffix, initial, final, or mixed)
10:1 for obliques following the object
2:1 for numeral-noun over noun-numeral
5:1 noun-adjective over adjective-noun
2:1 noun-genitive over genitive-noun
3:1 noun-demonstrative over demonstrative-noun

[Atrulfal]

Looks nice, but there are a couple of things that I noticed:

1. Your consonant inventory is VERY regular, which leads to some weird things. A thrill invetoy of /ʙ̥ mʙ r̥ nr ʀ̥ ŋʀ/ /ʙ̥ˀ mʙˀ r̥ˀ nrˀ ʀ̥ˀ ŋʀˀ/ /ʙ̥ʰ mʙʰ r̥ʰ nrʰ ʀ̥ʰ ŋʀʰ/ is very unrealistic. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with having a gap here and there, and an outlier somewhere else. That would help make it more naturalistic than the current situation of all the possible combinations of POA, MOA, and little diacritics being possible being phonemic.

Yes, i know. I will try to remake it into something more plausible.

1½. Exactly what is the ˀ supposed to represent? I cant find it in IPA. (If it is pharygealisation you need the mirror image insted.)

Glottalizaton

2. Vovel qualities of /i ɨ u æ a ɒ/. Vowel tends to like to fill out the space in the vowel grid. Even if /a/ is central this means that there is a huge concentration of vowels with high openness and i would expect /æ/ and /ɒ/ to drift towards more closure immediately, until you were left with something along the lines of /i ɨ ɛ a ɔ u/, which would be signifcantly more realistic and easier to use.

It was supposed to be /ä/. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamont_dialect

3. Your romanisation of the vowels seems pretty confusing to me. Perhaps people do things like that, but wouldn't it be easier, and more clear to just use something along the lines of <a ǎ â á à> instead of <a av aj ab as>.

I wanted it to be ASCII friendly.

4. I don't know how well a three-way length contrast would work together with having contour tones, as those as far as I know tend to make the vowel longer. I am also not sure how you would manage to get a contour tone to play with an ultra-short vowel. If I were you, I would cut it down to a two-way contrast. That way it would still be possible to have contour tones, without having to hold the long vowels with contour tones so long, that you would get bored before the end of it, just to maintain any sort of useful contrast with the normal and short vowels.

I agree with you.

[Atrulfal]

ˀ is glottalization, it's usually only used for sonorants (e.g. Kalispel's ejective /p' t' ts' tl' tʃ' kʷ' q' qʷ'/ and parallel /ˀm ˀn ˀl ˀj ˀw ˀʕ ˀʕʷ/). I use it for close transcription of my final fortis stops, since they vary from preglottalized to unreleased to ejective based on context. Here, though, it needs to be clarified what is meant - is /pˀ/ ejective, has a creaky-voiced offglide, or just followed by a glottal stop that's been analyzed as part of the same segment rather than an independent phoneme? /bˀ/ implosive, creaky-voiced, or postglottalized?

Postglottalized

Just so you know these are generally contradictory, SVO languages overwhelmingly prefer head-initial traits:
10:1 for prepositions over postpositions
75:1 for noun-relative clause over relative clause-noun
18:1 for initial subordinator versus anything else (SOV has very roughly 1:1:1.5:1 for suffix, initial, final, or mixed)
10:1 for obliques following the object
2:1 for numeral-noun over noun-numeral
5:1 noun-adjective over adjective-noun
2:1 noun-genitive over genitive-noun
3:1 noun-demonstrative over demonstrative-noun

Prefer, but still there is languages that doesn't.

[WeepingElf]

Nice sink, WeepingElf!

It's not mine, just one I hit upon googling for kitchen sink images.

[2+3 clusivity]

I will grant - as others have noted - that the phonology is a bit baroque; however, I think that nothing I have seen so far really needs criticism. Certainly some of the features you have picked out are unusual - but - whatever.

Build up your project a bit more, and I am sure this will be a good learning exercise for you.

Honestly, as you build a project farther, the typologically unusual things will begin to stick out to you naturally -- language is intuitive and beautiful in that sense.

[Atrulfal]

Okay, regarding the earlier posts, I decided to redesign the phonology completely

/m n ŋ/ <m n ng>
/b t d k g ʔ/ <b t d k g q>
/f θ s ʃ x ħ h/ <f c s x r h '>
/j w r l/ <y v z l>

/i iː u uː e o a aː/ <i ii u uu e o a aa> + plus three tones: mid, rising and falling

Syllable structure

(C)(C)(C)(G)V(G)(C)(C)

C = any consoannt.
G = /j, w, ʔ/
V = any vowel.

About allophony . . . i will think about that latter

[gufferdk]

Okay, regarding the earlier posts, I decided to redesign the phonology completely

/m n ŋ/ <m n ng>
/b t d k g ʔ/ <b t d k g q>
/f θ s ʃ x ħ h/ <f c s x z h '>
/j w r l/ <y v r l>

/i iː u uː e o a aː/ <i ii u uu e o a aa> + plus three tones: mid, rising and falling

Syllable structure

(C)(C)(C)(G)V(G)(C)(C)

C = any consoannt.
G = /j, w, ʔ/
V = any vowel.

About allophony . . . i will think about that latter

Looks much nicer and more realistic. And also a lot less kichen-sinky.
With only your current rules you would probably end up with some unweildy syllables that you would find it hard to pronounce. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it might be a good idea to have a few more rules so you don't end up allowing things like /btgʔâ:ʔgt/ .

[Atrulfal]

Looks much nicer and more realistic. And also a lot less kichen-sinky.
With only your current rules you would probably end up with some unweildy syllables that you would find it hard to pronounce. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it might be a good idea to have a few more rules so you don't end up allowing things like /btgʔâ:ʔgt/ .

It's okay this way.


Allophony and other processes

A rising tone will change to a high tone when it is after a rising tone.
A rising tone will change to a low tone when it is after a mid tone.
A falling tone will change to a low tone when it is after a falling tone.
A falling tone will change to a high tone when it is after a mid tone.

Before /i, iː, e/ and palatal consonants, /n, k, g, x, w, l,/ become /ɲ, c, ɟ, ç, ɥ, ʎ/.